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Friday, February 01, 2008

Return to Afghanistan By SAUL LANDAU

After six plus years, the war in Afghanistan drags on. The media occasionally cites casualties, but if it doesn't involve NFL veteran Pat Tillman's killing at the hands of his own comrades, Afghanistan gets sparse attention. A few stories feature the growing number of Afghan and Iraq War vets on American streets. But the aspiring candidates ignore such "blowback." Instead, they demonstrate verbal aggression, a characteristic thought necessary for victory. "We've got to get the job done there [Afghanistan]," Barack Obama asserted without specifying what the "job" is. (AP, Aug 14, 2007)

Obama called for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and sending them to "the right battlefield," Afghanistan and Pakistan. To pressure Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to act against terrorist training camps, Obama would use military force -- if he became President -- against those "terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans." (Bloomberg, Aug 1, 2007)

In mid January, Bush dispatched 3,200 additional marines to Afghanistan. Curiously, the uncurious media didn't ask why US and NATO forces continue to fight there. Nation Building? With little or no budget for reconstructing the country?

Junior partners, the British leaders, haven't learned lessons any better than their Yankee counterparts. Defense Minister Des Browne predicted British troops could stay there for "decades." Did he not learn that from 1839 to 1842 British troops fought in Afghanistan so they could take that sphere away from Russia? Now, NATO makes war there, says Browne, to insure that it would not again "become a training ground for terrorists threatening Great Britain."In the 19th Century, the British Empire suffered disastrous losses when it invaded Afghanistan and erected a puppet regime in Kabul -- just as the United States did (Hamid Karzai) after Bush's 2001 invasion. The puppet fell quickly when the British could not quell resistance. By 1842, Afghan mobs attacked Englishmen who remained in Kabul. The British army retreated toward India, its officers believing they had negotiated safe passage. Afghan "insurgents" slaughtered some 16,000 English soldiers.

In 2001, the British and other NATO forces marched in to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban. Six plus years later, Bin Laden remains hidden -- probably in Pakistan -- and the Taliban have returned to Afghanistan to mount a major insurgency in areas they once controlled. In addition, Afghani farmers have produced bumper opium crops that end up as heroin in western cities and profits for the Taliban leaders who tax the growers. Like its British-backed predecessor, the US puppet government in Kabul controls virtually no territory.Browne omitted that terrorists have found training grounds elsewhere -- in English cities, for example, and on the web. They can buy from hardware or agricultural stores -- lest anyone forget where the Christian Oklahoma bombers (pre 9/11) got their explosives. The US army provided training to Timothy McVeigh, convicted and executed for his role in the Oklahoma City explosion. Those bombers didn't need Afghanistan; nor did the fiends who blasted the Madrid train station, or the killers who hit the London underground. European and US cities offer ample meeting places and the US and British armed forces have taught hundreds of thousands of young men and women to kill with efficiency.

The Russians had also failed to grasp lessons of fighting a people determined to resist. Approximately 15,000 Red Army soldiers died from 1979 until 1988 when the Soviets withdrew. The humiliation speeded the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Bush ignored these facts as well as centuries of experience when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. Indeed, the lack of success in Afghanistan has not stopped the major presidential candidates from pledging to stay the course there. Wars of choice in Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq have shown that Americans and their European junior partners don't easily tolerate taking casualties abroad, especially in wars their leaders cannot successfully explain.

The overwhelming sentiment against Iraq will turn to Afghanistan as casualty rates continue or accelerate. Yes, the Taliban government harbored Bin Laden and offered training to would-be militants but, ask millions of people, which country supplied the funds for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia, our dear and loyal ally! Who paid for the madrasas (religious schools) where the young Afghan boys and teens learned their religious ideology ­ including beating an effigy of George Bush I ­ and got military training?

Pakistan ­ another ally ­ not only hosted the madrasas, but offered Bin Laden and gang ample protection before and after 9/11. Bush chose to hit Afghanistan and Iraq, countries whose involvement was secondary or non-existent. No major candidate addresses this issue. The press screams the question every day ­ through its silence.

As additional US marines land they will discover in Afghanistan that the old tribal forces continue to struggle for power. The largest, the Pashtuns, have shown sympathy to the Taliban. Some tribal leaders or their fathers received CIA aid during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. They used none of it to build the country, but rather fought with each other in the post Soviet era and made it possible for the Taliban to enter and take control.

Key Pakistani generals promoted the Taliban in the early 1990s, and their zealous brand of Islam spread deeply inside their country, including within military and intelligence circles. When assassins struck Benazir Bhutto on December 27, they delivered a severe body blow to secular government.

The tribal forces unleashed by "Charlie Wilson's War (it was really Ronald Reagan's and CIA Chief William Casey's war to weaken the Soviet Union) had no interest in changing Afghanistan into a modern democracy; another dependable cog in the big wheel of corporate globalization.Bush's neo con advisers, however, threw "democracy" at the public much as TV preachers intone Jesus while offering to cure their flock's ailment with a little pressure from silver-crossed palms blessed by God. They had no plans to transform this ancient land and people into poorer carbon copies of themselves.

Afghans have proved more resistant to Western efforts to change their old life into one of a consumer society than new bacteria are to antibiotics. William Pfaff in an excellent January 16 column quotes Rory Stewart, head of the Turquois Mountain Foundation in Kabul. The United States and its western allies "should accept that we don't have the power, knowledge or legitimacy to change those societies."

Stewart noted that "War has eroded social structures and entrenched ethnic suspicion....Power is in the hands of tribal leaders and militia commanders. Much of Afghanistan is barren and most people cannot read or write....The local population is at best suspicious of our actions." Stewart claimed that in at least one province, Helmand, "...it is more dangerous for foreign civilians than it was two years ago before we deployed our troops." (Jan. 16, 2008, Tribune Media Services) Bush's argument relies on fear, not fact. If the Taliban retakes control, the West would be threatened.

The Taliban will remain after the West grows weary of this enigmatic war. Paddy Ashdown, the UN's new envoy to Afghanistan, warned: "We are losing in Afghanistan - and rather than militarily, we are losing the political mission - and in large part we are losing because there has been a complete failure of the international community to co-ordinate its efforts."

That failure, he continued "relies on the fact that we believe, for some bizarre reason, that we have such a unique system of government in our own countries ­ by the way, not a view shared by many of our citizens - that we believe we have a right to impose it lock, stock and barrel, along with the values and everything that goes along with it, on other countries with the use of B-52s, tanks and rifles." (Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, January 17, 2008)

Little thought or planning preceded Bush's order to invade and occupy Afghanistan. The war makers assumed their traditional omnipotence, that from noble intentions (or rhetoric) a stable and prosperous nation would somehow develop. It didn't happen, but the Taliban returned, and gained strength and confidence. Bush responds by dispatching more US forces, already overstretched and overstressed, to bring force into a place where it has traditionally proven ineffective.

Before the next appropriation, Members of Congress and the media might read a few verses of Rudyard Kipling on older wars in that region:

"And after-ask the YusufzaiesWhat comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station-A canter down some dark defile-Two thousand pounds of educationDrops to a ten-rupee jezail-No proposition Euclid wrote,No formulae the text-books know,Will turn the bullet from your coat,Or ward the tulwar's downward blowStrike hard who cares-shoot straight who can-The odds are on the cheaper man." ("Arithmetic on the Frontier")

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"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

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Russell Crowe, Amanda Dole and myself outside Radio Redfern, May Day 1989. Russell had just performed a few songs on my show, Radio Solidarity. Amanda is an organiser for the National Union of Workers.

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Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy